You're thinking of something else, but you're close enough. For instance,
there are laws in most jurisdictions about requiring a social security
number to open a bank account, for any of a number of reasons including
credit checks, and checks on how many, um, negative-funded, bank accounts
you might have hanging out there before you opened this one. More to the
point, since interest is taxable income for individuals, and a tax
deductible expense for corporations, social security numbers are required
in order to pay you interest.
Ah the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 (which outlawed bank secrecy).
http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/SupManual/bsa/bsa_p2.pdf
http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/SupManual/bsa/bsa_p1.pdf
The Feds do require SS numbers on bank accounts in most cases but the requirement has major loopholes.
[And, yes, Duncan may be right, you might be able to spoof an SSN at them
somehow, but I don't know anyone who's actually done it, admitted it in any
public detail, and not been somehow razzed legally for it.]
It's actually not too hard because bank officers can't verify SS numbers save by using the well-known methods to check facial validity. As long as you precheck your numbers with a program like ssn.exe which checks for non-existent number ranges and state of issue, you should be OK. The SS Admin refused to allow the credit reporting agencies to verify their records agains the Feds database (because of the privacy implications). As always, if you get turned down someplace, go someplace else.
Likewise, SSNs are not required to open accounts in other countries and these accounts are accessible these days by Internet Banking and credit/debit cards.
One can also set up entities such as: sole proprietorship, partnership, trust, estate, corporation, etc. and apply for a taxpayer ID number (TIN) and have the entity open an account. The advantage of this is that you can have an infinite number of unconnected entities thus defeating the "linking" problem involved in the use of a single identifier such as the SSN.
In addition, the new online payment services don't always require an SS# to open an account:
Do not require SSN to open account
PayPal -- http://www.paypal.com (Now international as well which creates a further loophole.)
BillPoint (Wells Fargo & eBay) -- http://www.billpoint.com/ (Requires Ebay registration which requires a credit card to sell but not to buy.)
dotBank (Yahoo) -- (http://www.dotbank.com/) Now http://paydirect.yahoo.com/
PayMe -- https://www.payme.com/
Ecount -- http://www.ecount.com/
MoneyZap (Western Union) -- http://www.moneyzap.com/
Require SSN to open account
eMoneyMail (BankOne) -- http://www.emoneymail.com/
ProPay -- http://www.propay.com/
c2it -- (Citigroup & AOL) http://www.c2it.com/
Most of these accounts can be opened with throwaway email address and a accommodation address for your physical address. As they grow in importance, having an account with them may be more useful.
It is important to note that the best way to dodge some of the paperwork is to open accounts when services are new since the requirements tend to increase over time. Prior to October 1999(?) for example, Ebay did not require a credit card to open a sales account and existing account holders were grandfathered in when they added that requirement. But there are always new account and payment systems popping up so you can continue to take advantage of this principle.
Keep in mind that there are other financial account privacy techniques not mentioned here. Use your imagination.
[The answer to this "lie to the government, don't get a bank account"
Usually, you're not lying to the government but to a private party acting on behalf of the government.
problem, which any persistent cypherpunk subscriber knows, is, of course,
to have payment systems which don't *need* physical identity for
non-repudiation of transactions and the subsequent requirement of the force
of a nation-state to make settlement risk manageable: bearer certificates
based on cryptographic protocols like blind signatures, which will,
frankly, only *really* be possible, soup-withdrawl to nuts-deposit, when a
bearer currency issue is *itself* reserved by other digital bearer assets,
instead of just a book-entry account somewhere.]
Definitely a good idea if someone can pull it off.
DCF
